I’ve been cooking from Yotam Ottolenghi’s books ever since my cousin Rachel told me about him. Ottolenghi and his business partner, Sami Tamimi, were both born in Jerusalem — the former is Jewish and the latter is Palestinian.

What I personally find very interesting about Ottolenghi’s approach to food is that he celebrates vegetables while at the same time also eating and enjoying meat. He was author of “The New Vegetarian” column in the Guardian magazine from 1996 to 2010, and he would sometimes mention when a dish would work well …

For all of my Jewish readers, and those who are Jew-curious, L’shana Tova! This is a re-post of an email that Seymour, my financial advisor sent over to me (of course my financial advisor is Jewish and named Seymour, right?). And while it’s a bit silly, and a lot inappropriate, I hope it makes you smile.

As a general principle, Jewish holidays are divided between days on which you must starve and days on which you must overeat.
Some Jews observe no fewer than 16 fasts throughout the Jewish year, based on …

I kept hearing about a cronut™ craze going on in New York last spring — with people lining up over two hours before Dominique Ansel’s bakery opened for the chance to try one. Each cronut is $5 with a limit of two per person, and cronut scalpers were waiting in line and then selling their cronuts for up to $100 each. New Yorkers are fuckin’ crazy….
Wait a minute — Austinites are also known to wait in line for their favorite food. I actually drove past Franklin Barbecue at 9 a.m. this morning and …

I’ve been making a lot of recipes from Yotam Ottolenghi’s cookbooks lately. Ottolenghi is Jewish and was born in Jerusalem; his business partner Sami Tamimi is Muslim and was also born there. Their restaurants are in London, where they have each lived for decades.
This recipe for Baharat spice mix is in their “Jerusalem” cookbook, and is called for in a recipe for stuffed peppers that we are making tomorrow night.
The recipe calls for whole dried spices, and we purchased them in Central Market’s bulk section for a few bucks. I …

Earlier this week, Adam and I reserved two seats for an Olamaie (pron. “Ola-may”) pop-up dinner, held at Lenoir. According to their website, Olamaie is a modern Southern food restaurant set to open in Austin in early winter 2013. Olamaie will be located at 1610 San Antonio Street, in the old Sagra location.
They are building buzz for the new venture, as well as working out the kinks, with a series of pop-up dinners in August, September and October. The final pop-up dinner this week is tonight, but you can still reserve seats …

Lots going on this month in Austin, so I decided it was time for a round-up!
Red Rabbit Bakery, a vegan bakery that happens to make my favorite doughnuts in town, is offering a special until Thursday at 7 pm: order a dozen doughnuts for reproductive justice activists at the Texas Capitol, and Red Rabbit will donate all profits from every sale to Planned Parenthood of Greater Texas.
Red Rabbit Bakery goods — which were previously only available at Austin farmer’s markets and coffee shops — will be available at Red Rabbit …

A project that I started, but did not finish, before our wedding last October was to print out family wedding portraits to display on the welcome table. And since my parents and in-laws spent the time to find and scan the photos for me, I wanted to share them here in order of wedding date.
My mom’s parents, Joe and Betty Leitch, were married in St. Catharines, Ontario — Betty’s hometown — on May 24, 1937. Papa and Mama — as they were known to their grandchildren, met in early 1936, …